What characteristics push people to move and what pulls them to a new location? Evidence from the US has suggested that people are pulled to cities with a high population density and with large concentrations of skilled people. But how does this apply to New Zealand? Where are people moving to...

The 'excess burden' of taxation represents an efficiency loss which must be compared with any perceived gains arising either from income redistribution or the non-transfer expenditure carried out by the government. An important property is that, under certain assumptions, it increases...

In this paper, I address three questions of government financial policy: how should a government’s aversion to financial risk be determined, when are new financial investments justified, and what is the optimal level of reserves in a flexible exchange rate regime. To answer these questions, I...

Recent research shows that trade of goods and financial products is much greater within countries than it is between countries, even allowing for factors such as transports costs. This lack of economic integration is likely to be costly for small nations, as internal trade is much less diverse...

This paper reports early results from an ongoing analysis of the income dynamics of individuals, using the Inland Revenue Department’s income tax database over the four- year period 1994-7. The first two parts of the paper assess the reliability of the data. The third part reports a...

This paper reports new aggregate and industry productivity series for the New Zealand economy for the period 1988 to 2002. These productivity series are intended for ongoing monitoring of New Zealand’s productivity performance and for use in further analyses investigating the evolution,...

This paper analyses key issues that may be relevant to setting the Crown's overall objectives and practices for financial asset and liability management. It examines implications of the nature of the Crown's balance sheet for asset and liability management and investigates the appropriate...

This paper examines ethnic differences in the relationship between educational attainment and income in New Zealand over the period 1986 to 1996. In particular, it uses a 50% sample from the Census in each of those years to determine how far ethnic differences in income are explained by...

This paper estimates the non-increasing inflation rate of unemployment or NAIRU for New Zealand. A NAIRU that varies over time has important implications in considering inflationary pressures. This paper estimates the time-varying NAIRU using a Kalman filter on a reduced form approach and...

Access to off-shore markets, technology, and ideas are important to greater productivity and higher living standards in New Zealand. Global connectedness requires deep and rich links with other countries. However, as a small country, we only have the resources to focus on a handful of countries....